


What Makes a Monster

by pine_storm_season



Category: Dream SMP - Fandom
Genre: Dissociation, Gen, Gore, Torture, generally just. bad stuff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-17
Updated: 2021-03-17
Packaged: 2021-03-26 04:42:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,390
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30100476
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pine_storm_season/pseuds/pine_storm_season
Summary: so about that lore stream huh
Comments: 4
Kudos: 132





	What Makes a Monster

**Author's Note:**

> warnings: this is Dark. fairly graphic torture, as well as quackity putting the blame for it on dream, and the dissociation is just the last few paragraphs but i'll warn for it nonetheless

_Instruments of torture: netherite axe (unbreaking three, mending, efficiency five, sharpness five), netherite sword (unbreaking three, mending, sharpness five, looting three, fire aspect two), iron shears._

_Objective of torture: getting the information on how to revive people._

_Duration: every day, until Dream gives in._

_Notes: Quackity has full permission to do this, although I don't agree with it. He was going to bring an unenchanted diamond sword and axe to torture Dream with, but I gave him my sword and axe instead, as well as shears._

_Additional notes: he did not sign his name in the books, although as he does not seem to have bad intentions, so I will put that down to a misunderstanding/mistake/forgetfulness and simply require that he sign them again next visit, as well as I will now check all books to make sure they have been properly signed._

Sam sighed, settling down on the floor and putting the notebook away. Sometimes he was glad that the lava muffled sound so completely; it had been hard enough to hear him scream when Sam had had control over what was happening to him.

He didn't wonder if he should have stopped Quackity, instead. Sam had enough blood on his hands to think it—hypocritical, at the very least. He was well familiar with how Dream looked and sounded when he was in pain.

He's not a good person. That he knew. Good people don’t condone the torture of someone, no matter what they've done; good people don’t participate in that torture.

Good people don’t leave a kid to die at the hands of their abuser.

Sam shivered, despite the heat coming off the lava in front of him, and busied himself tracing the enchantment runes on his pickaxe. _Efficiency five, unbreaking three, mending, silk touch._ They pulsed with a soft purplish light.

Too pretty, Sam thought without meaning to, for something that left a man broken and bloodied on the floor of an obsidian box. Too pretty for something that had caused such pain.

Even through the muffling lava, he thought he could hear Dream screech in pain, and then whimper broken pleas. Broken sobs, tiny pained sounds, all that much worse than when he screamed.

Sam shook his head, back and forth, until the sound faded out of his ears. There's no way he could actually hear Dream, not through the lava, not if he was whimpering or crying. He was imagining it. He was imagining it.

He was imagining it, so he fixed his gaze firmly on the enchantment runes of his pickaxe, and waited.

Sam knew what he was. He’d made his peace with it. And yet, there was something different about doing it, caught up in the adrenaline and the heat of the moment, and just waiting for someone else to finish with him.

//

If Quackity thought about it, he understood Schlatt. Understood how Schlatt felt, standing over him, violence in the very air. But he tried not to think about it, because every time the thought crossed his mind, he felt sick.

“Dream,” he chided, “come on. Tell me how to revive people, and I'll stop.”

“No,” he rasped weakly. Blood trickled down his face from a cut on his forehead and slipped into his mouth. He coughed, lifting a hand weakly to wipe it away. “I'm not—‘m not gonna tell you. Never.”

A sick, sadistic grin stretched across Quackity’s face. “Dream, remember this; you could have stopped it.”

He brought down the sword on Dream’s shoulders, and Dream gasped, jerking weakly as he tried to roll away. Quackity stopped him with a foot on his back, holding him in place, and sunk the side of the burning blade into Dream’s back.

Dream screeched in pain, his voice ragged and broken, and writhed in an attempt to get away. It didn't work, of course, only sending the blade skidding across his back and leaving it a tapestry of tiny, scorched cuts.

The sword burned, and so it would cauterize any wound made by it. But maybe Quackity _wanted_ him to bleed out, wanted him to dissolve into dust only to reawaken with all the wounds a new layer of scars on his skin, wanted to have a fresh slate to work with.

Quackity kicked Dream’s body over to lie on his back, ignoring the tiny, gasping whimpers that came spilling from his mouth. He drew the axe, and traced it lightly down Dream’s chest, before suddenly slamming it down with a sickening crack.

He screamed, writhing in pain, but within a minute, his body was dissolving. Dream came falling down the chute and landing hard on his back on the obsidian, eyes glazed with respawn fog, trembling hard.

“I'll give you a minute,” Quackity said, “to recover from the respawn fog. And then I'll start back up again, and again, and again, until you tell me how to revive people. Okay, Dream?”

Dream whimpered, staring up at the ceiling with glassy eyes. Tears slid down his temples into his hair.

“Okay?” Quackity said again, harder, sharper, less forgiving.

Dream flinched, and nodded with clear effort. The diamond-shaped scar on the side of his neck caught the lava’s light, and Quackity barely kept himself from touching the matching scar on the underside of his jaw.

“Okay,” Quackity said, after a minute, “time’s up. Round two.”

Dream shuddered, curling into himself, and Quackity snorted. He grabbed Dream’s wrist, dragging him over to the center of the cell.

Dream’s heartbeat was frantic and light against his fingers, and Quackity dug his nails into the pulse point. Dream flinched.

“You can make it stop, Dream,” Quackity said, bringing the sword down into his hand. Dream screamed and jerked, blood spraying from the wound. A drop landed just below his eye, and he released Dream to wipe it off.

Dream scrambled back, clutching his wounded hand to his chest, watching Quackity with wild, terrified eyes.

//

Dream didn't know how many bodies it had been. How many deaths, how many respawns, how many new layers of scars were scattered across his skin.

“I'll tell you,” he gasped at some point, and Quackity paused. “I'll tell you, please, please, stop, I'll tell you—”

Quackity had tipped his chin up to look him in the eyes, and Dream was frozen.

“Tell me,” he had said, and Dream had stammered out some made-up ritual, not caring about the consequences for lying, full of desperation for it to stop.

Quackity had nodded, and released him, giving him one last parting kick that made his ribs scream with pain, and then the lava had come down and let Quackity back across. Dream had stayed on the floor, pathetic, pitiful sobs wracking his body. Every movement shot a new spike of agony through him, including breathing, and Dream couldn't control the pained sounds spilling from his mouth.

He couldn't stop shaking, later on. And he was exhausted, but he couldn’t close his eyes, because every time he did, Quackity was back. Hurting him, taunting him, that terrifying look still on his face.

Dream shuddered and tried to breathe.

He was sure he sounded and looked pathetic, laying in a pool of his blood from five or six or ten bodies—he didn't remember, he didn't remember anymore, after the third death Quackity didn't wait for the respawn fog to wear off and it left everything so much fuzzier—and sobbing. But it wasn't even full sobbing, either, just broken, whimper-like breaths and pained whines.

He wanted—hell, he wanted Sam, because Sam hurt him too but never went this far, never caused respawn after respawn, never left his body littered with new scars after an hour—

“Sam,” he tried to say, but the whispery sob wouldn't have been audible even if the lava wasn’t there. “Please. Please come help me. Please.”

No one came, and something similar to respawn fog crept across Dream’s mind. It dulled the pain in every inch of his body, dulled the fear, dulled everything. His breaths started to slow, and the grey fog in his head was soothing.

Dully, he wondered if he was going to die. But he was so exhausted, and he didn't hurt as much anymore, and he couldn't help but fall asleep.

His dreams weren't any better than the living world was.

**Author's Note:**

> information obtained through torture is rarely accurate, as the victim will say anything to make it stop. quackity doesn't seem to have realized this.   
> yet.


End file.
